Thursday, May 29, 2008

Attachment Parenting

My husband will tell you that I spoil our daughter. I baby her too much I guess. I give in when he wouldn’t. But let me tell you what. I may be a little bit of an “attachment” style parent, but he’s just as big a spoiler of our daughter as I am!

Yes, she may have slept in our room a bit longer than her cousins slept with their parents… but I was breast feeding. It was a bit more convenient for me to reach over the edge of the bed and pick her up to nurse her in the middle of the night, than it would have been to walk across our apartment and sit in a chair for 30 minutes in the middle of the night. And she did nurse a lot more in the middle of the night compared to her cousins (these are all comments Christopher has made) but breast milk doesn’t take as long for a baby stomach to process, so they wake up hungry sooner than a formula fed baby would. Anyways… There are more things he’s said, but I’m not trying to bash him or anything… he just doesn’t understand my reasoning behind the way I do things sometimes. Anyways… on with my story.

Taylor has slept in bed with us since Monday night. At first Chris’s excuse was that he had so much fun spending the weekend with me and Taylor, he didn’t want it to be over. He couldn’t bare to just put her back in her bed on Monday night and go to work on Tuesday morning without seeing her. So she slept with us. Or rather, she slept with him, and I was shoved to the edge of the bed. Not that I really mind. It’s kind of nice having her there to cuddle with. I miss her being teeny tiny and I really miss nursing her and the closeness I felt during those times. So it was nice.

Then Tuesday night… He didn’t want to put her in bed cause she was starting to get sick. So she slept with us again. Again, it was more “on Chris” than on our bed! She sure does love her daddy and he was soaking it up. It was nice to see though. I wanted to take a picture, but my battery is dead… oh well.

Then last night… She slept with us again. Her fever was at 101.5 WITH Motrin! I was getting pretty nervous, but we made it through the night okay. I’m very glad she slept with us last night so I was able to keep a watch on her fever… but I didn’t get much sleep at all. I was also feeling pretty bad and had a fever of my own. But I was surprised by how much Chris was up last night with me and Taylor. It was nice. Even though it was weird to all be awake at 3 in the morning… it was a family bonding moment… It’s hard to explain. It was just one of those moments when me and Chris both wanted nothing more than for Taylor to feel better and relax, and because of that, it was a bonding moment. It’s strange how different your relationship changes when a baby comes into the pictures.

My whole point to this is that I am not the only “attachment” style parent in this relationship. Chris may like to believe that I baby Taylor more, but he’s just as bad as me, if not worse. He doesn’t see what I DON’T let her get away with during the day. But I like our way of doing things. They work for us. They may not work for the next baby… the circumstances will be so different… Maddie’s personality will be different, my time and energy will be different… But I think that we’ve kind of figured part of it out for us for now. It’s a bit of a relief!